Knoah to foray into call center space

HYDERABAD: Knoah Communications Pvt. Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of

US-based Knoah Solutions, Inc has chalked out plans to invest around Rs 350

crore in India over the next five years. The firm has already set up its call

center in the city and now intends to provide Web-based customer support

outsourcing services for e-mail, real time chat and self-service customer care.

As part of its expansion plans, Knoah, a global outsourcer of Web contract

centers, will employ around 1,600 professionals in India by 2002 and this figure

would go up to 6,000 by 2004. Initially we would establish centers in

Vishakapatnam and other important town in Andhra Pradesh and by 2004 we would

like to establish ourselves at Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai in India. We are also

looking at opening multiple centers in Europe and China as well, said president

of Knoah Communications.

The firm has already signed an agreement with the Atlanta-based Earthlink to

provide its call center services to the company. Earthlink is harnessing Knoah's

e-services as part of an initiative to provide cost effective customer service

from offshore locations.

The firm with 4.7 million subscribers has its 12 call centers in US and

processes around 2 million calls per month. "By diverting some of our calls

to India we can save as much as 30 per cent of our expenditure. Moreover, Knoah

is having a dedicated bandwidth of up to 2 MB, which would help them handle the

services quite efficiently," said Earthlink executive vice president Carter

Calle.